Chess vs. Shogi

I have been looking in recent forums in the homepage. I think this is a question to match it. Which do you think is harder to play Chess or Shogi. Shogi is Japanese chess for those who don't know. If you automatically say shogi because i don't know Japanese it doesn't mean anything because there is western symbolic pieces.

Since I learned chess first and been playing for years a game like it but different proved difficult for me. i sometimes make simple mistakes in chess think of shogi pawns and vice versa. i once in chess played my friend and move my rook in danger of a chess pawn thinking it wasn't in danger because of shogi pawns. learning to play without confusion is harder than learning the games.

One thing I thought was interesting about shogi in comparison to chess is that the opening of shogi consists of creating a "fortress", and rather than different opening lines, there are different types of fortresses. I'd love to learn shogi, but really don't have the time being busy with school and chess.

I've been playing shogi quite a bit recently, although I don't think I've got the hang of the openings. It's quite an interesting contrast to chess because a number of the pieces are better at moving forwards than backwards (or like pawns, don't move backwards at all) and there are no pawn chains (because pawns don't defend each other) so the game has a much different structure. The ability to reenter captured pieces is a whole lot of fun and is one of the main attractions of the game in my view.

I think IM Larry Kaufman's article posted to Shogi-l in 1999 is still interesting to read when you think of this topic. He compares chess with not only shogi but also Chinese chess, Korean chess, Chu Shogi, and so forth. Here it is;

Due to the rules of re-using captured pieces, the complexity is increasing in the endgame of shogi. I mean the number of possible moves one can make are bigger in the endgame than in the middlegame in shogi. So reversal often occurs in the endgame. I think shogi is often like a baseball game with reversal in the 8th or 9th inning.